I’ve made campaigning harder on myself. I’m limiting donations to $20/person to keep contributions affordable and equal. I’m disclosing my donor list before election day.

The easiest thing to do is pile on. I’m not going to do that. Some design elements at Division Ave could have been executed better. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good reasons behind the changes. That doesn’t mean we can’t find a balance between the needs of drivers and other ways of getting around. That’s different from saying the entire project is a boondoogle. There are endless ways to compromise. This doesn’t have to be such a fight.

Right now municipal councils across Alberta ask their administrations to provide a recommendation for every ‘Request for Decision.’ This places staff in an unfair, impossible position. Instead of interpreting 'advise' to mean recommending a decision to council, we can alternatively interpret 'advise' to mean informing council of benefits, risks and tradeoffs, leaving the final decision to council.

The standard we should judge service delivery is not perfection, but our peers. Participating in municipal benchmarking is the best way to accomplish this.

Council needs high level teamwork skills. Citizens need better teamwork skills too. Democracy isn’t a spectator sport. The better teamwork skills we practice in our community—the better candidates we’ll see. It’ll take time and practice for our community to get better at participating effectively. 

Councillors are elected on individual platforms, then must immediately transition to working as a team. I didn’t appreciate the difficulty of working as a team until I sat down in one of the nine council chairs.